


Resolution

by lizbetann



Category: Forever Knight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-09-01
Updated: 1997-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbetann/pseuds/lizbetann





	Resolution

Resolution  
by Lizbetann  
Chapter 1

It was cold in the station. Goosebumps rose on my arms and I absently  
rubbed them for warmth as I shuffled through folder after folder, pale  
yellow/beige blurring into a colorless mass. My blazer hung on the back  
of the chair, but I didn't move to put it on. The sleeves dragged through  
the papers and were more trouble than they were worth in warmth. My  
trained mind fixed on random details passing before my eyes, disregarding  
my physical discomfort. Whether or not this exercise was of any use didn't  
matter at the moment; the ritual calmed me and gave my brain a chance to  
stop chasing its tail and heel at my command.

The call had come three days before, catching me at a rare moment between  
assignments. I was in the apartment--I can't call it my home, since it  
only sees my presence for three out of every twelve months. They said that  
she was missing, simply gone without a trace. For a moment I wondered why  
they had bothered to call me. It was an unsettling realization that my  
name was listed as her "next of kin"--because there was no other kin left.

They intended the report to be a mere formality, comforting police to  
grieving sister. They failed to take into account the fact that I was an  
investigator, and unlikely to leave the case alone. I'll give them this,  
they eventually accepted the inevitable with good grace. Capt. Reese gave  
me access to all the files I asked for, and a desk to work at. There were  
two to choose from--a dead woman's and a missing man's. I choose the  
man's, in the superstitious hope that somehow Nick Knight's thought process  
would merge with mine, and I would begin to understand why he and my sister  
had disappeared on the same night.

The facts were sparse. Dr. Natalie Lambert had given notice, packed up the  
things in her office, and disappeared. Det. Nicholas Knight lost a second  
partner within a year, was on the verge of being investigated for the death  
of both that partner and a suspect, and disappeared. Nice and simple.  
People who couldn't take any more and just got up and walked away. I saw  
them every day in my job.

But Nat's apartment was pristine, untouched, full of personal possessions.  
Her clothes were in the closet, food was in the refrigerator, and a hungry  
cat was wailing to be fed. Nick Knight's desk sat untouched in its  
typically male sloppy splendor--but no gum wrappers, no greasy hamburger  
bags, no photos of friends, of family. His loft was equally full of  
everyday personal possessions, but mysteriously lacking, somehow. There  
was a sense of empty places, as if a few things too precious to leave for  
others to find had been removed.

I could only assume that Nat and Nick Knight had disappeared together.  
Nat's car was found abandoned at the airport, Knight's tuna boat was safe  
in his garage. Co-workers reported that the detective and the coroner were  
"close"--not lovers, but everyone in the station would have been more than  
happy to play matchmaker. Both were secretive, close-mouthed about their  
lives.

Both were missing.

It was generally believed that they had left together, despite the fact  
they had left the most rudimentary of their personal possessions behind.  
Nat, in quitting her job, was certainly looking to move on. Presumably,  
the line ran, she convinced Knight to run away with her, and imagined the  
two of them soaking up the tropical breeze and pina coladas in Rio.

None of that agreed with my sickening gut-level suspicion that my sister  
was dead.  
\--------  
It was a window that I had watched for nearly six years, yet this time  
there was a difference. The woman still had long curly light brown hair  
and blue eyes, still walked with the same purposeful stride. The cat was  
fed, the TV burbling too softly for her human ears to make out words, on, I  
presumed, more for noise than entertainment.

But she was not the woman I had watched for so long. She was her sister,  
who would not stay long. And when she left, so would I.

The good doctor was dead--or so I was told. De Brabant as well--delivered  
in the same dispassionate tone. Both bodies tidily disposed of, and the  
doctor's car left in an obvious place to deflect police attention.  
Carefully, deliberately, he told me everything that had occurred, punishing  
himself with the retelling. I held my silence, hearing more than was said,  
hearing the pain that he would refuse to admit to. Then he left--for  
where, he never said.

My responsibly for six years had been to make sure that the human woman who  
had discovered our kind did not reveal our existence to the world.  
Generally, when such an unfortunate event happens, the human in question is  
hypnotized or killed. But my superiors had stayed that sentence of  
execution. A medical examiner determined to protect her friend's secret  
might just be more useful alive rather than dead. I was instructed to stay  
in Toronto and keep an eye on her.

Now she would never reveal her secret.

My charge was to remain until every loose end was tied, until the police  
officially stated that Natalie Lambert had skipped town and the sister  
left. Then I would be free to pursue my own life--or unlife, as the case  
may be.

And Toronto would be left as perhaps the only major city in the world where  
vampires did not roam the night.  
\--------  
It was eerie, living a dead woman's life. I had done it before, to track  
killers, but never for someone I had known before they were a corpse. The  
first night, I couldn't bear to sleep in Nat's bed. Her bed, her sheets,  
her plants withering on the sill, the soap melted into a puddle from the  
steady drip drip of the showerhead, milk spoiling in the refrigerator. Her  
clothes, her computer, her books, her cat...

Sydney accepted me with surprising ease. I had never owned a pet in my  
life, never considered it. A cat seemed to be too much responsibility.  
But Sydney cuddled close and demanded attention. Apparently, pheromones  
were enough in his eyes--or nose--to link two sisters who had nothing else  
in common.

Nat and I had been butting heads for my whole life. Seven years my senior,  
there was too much distance between us to allow for easy communication.  
Richard had been two years younger than she; I had been the afterthought  
child, unplanned, though no less wanted for all that--or so I had been  
assured throughout my childhood.

But the simple fact remained that Nat and I had been too disparate in age  
to have much in common. When I was just starting to be self-aware, Nat was  
beginning her teens. When I reached the age of rebellion, she was in  
college, working toward her medical degree. Our father died when I was  
fourteen, leaving me the only child still at home. My mother's and my  
shaky relationship quickly disintegrated under that stress, and at  
seventeen I finished school and took myself off to university in the  
States, at Colombia. At eighteen I further proved my inveterate  
perverseness by choosing my father's US citizenship over my mother's  
Canadian, and after graduating joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  
After that, family contact was limited to Christmases at home where I  
talked about my career with the FBI, Nat talked about her career with the  
county coroners office and Richard talked about his career as a Crown  
Prosecutor--and his wife and daughter. We agreed that law enforcement  
seemed to be in our blood. Mom died five years after I left home, and I  
began to believe that perhaps as an adult I could be accepted into the  
family circle.

Sydney mewled angrily, flicking his claws lightly at my arm as my grip  
turned too strong. Then Richard was shot and killed. I was only three  
years out of college when Nat called me at my apartment and told me my  
brother had been brutally murdered. In a brusque, distracted voice, she  
told me that there was no point coming to Toronto, since Richard had  
already been buried. She had not even bothered to tell me he had been  
injured until he was already in the ground. Stunned and furious, I told  
her precisely what I thought of her actions, and slammed down the phone.

I never spoke to her again.  
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+  
Chapter 2

At some point in my investigation, it began to be apparent that any  
questions I wanted answered would have to come from Nick Knight. There was  
so little in Nat's personal effects to indicate what had happened to her,  
both that night and in the preceding six years. I read the suicide note  
and journal that Nat's friend had dumped on her, and raged with impotent  
fury at the woman who had selfishly unloaded everything on Nat, who had  
been the least likely person to be able to deal with it. But there was  
nothing more, no personal papers of Nat's own, nothing.

The answers, therefore, had to come from Knight, a man everyone liked and  
no one seemed to know. His two former partners were dead. Before that, he  
had worked solo. He had transferred to Toronto seven years before from  
Chicago, but tracking his life back that far would take time and effort,  
not to mention calling in a few favors. Capt. Reese knew nothing about  
him. Capt. Cohen had died with his former partner, Schanke. Capt.  
Stonetree have declined to comment past stating somewhat mysteriously that  
there were things in Knight's life that I simply did not want to know.

Talk about waving a red flag in front of a bull.  
He lived well but paid all his bills. He was forced to shun the daylight  
yet his loft was filled with paintings of suns. No family, little past.  
Nat had been his closest friend, yet even before Richard's death she had  
never mentioned him to me.

The only other direction I had to follow concerned-- of all things--a  
nightclub. Called the Raven, it had been passed from the hands of a  
Janette Du Charme to those of Lucien LaCroix in the last year. Knight had  
visited the club on a regular basis for the past four years, presumably in  
a professional capacity.

I waited until nine in the evening to go to the club, assuming that it  
would be easier to find the owner--LaCroix--during early business hours.  
Unused to such places, I put on my generic little black dress and more  
makeup than I usually wore in a week--meaning mascara and blush.

My primping was of no use--the club was deserted. No notice, no for sale  
sign, just an eerie silence.

"No one's here."

It was a mark of my training that I automatically clawed for the  
non-existent service revolver under my arm. Sheepishly, I dropped my hand  
from its reflexive movement and said, "Thanks."

In the dim light from moon and streetlamps, I studied my unknown companion.  
Dressed simply but neatly in black jeans and a dark buttoned shirt, he  
stood with his hands in his pockets, watching me watch him with measuring  
eyes. Dark hair fell over those eyes, but did not mar their impact.

Seemingly waking from some contemplation, he took his hand and a key from  
his pocket and unlocked the door. The panel swung open on well-oiled  
hinges. I felt my mouth curve; somehow, I had been expecting a haunting  
creak. With a brief but surprisingly genteel wave of the hand, he silently  
invited me to enter. When I hesitated, he smiled. "It's a choice between  
staying alone on the street or coming inside with a stranger." His voice  
was rich and warm, flavored lightly with a French accent. I had grown up  
in Canada, and like any Canadian had taken Level Four French, had heard  
Quebecians speak accented English and purest French. Somehow, this man's  
voice sounded different, as though his French sprung from Europe rather  
than the New World.

I stepped inside the deserted club. My companion flipped on a bank of  
lights that probably were rarely used; they revealed the bar and dance  
floor with a punishing white glare rather than the dim colored pulses I  
would have expected. I descended to the lower level. Behind me, he  
started to remove the short cape I had flung over my dress. Flinching, I  
faced him and backed up a step or five. "Je m'appelle Joanna Lambert," I  
said, for some reason slipping into my schoolgirl French.

The unrelenting light revealed my companion to be wearing a deep bloodred  
silk shirt and to have blue eyes that pinned mine. If I had not already  
heard his accent, I would have assumed him to be Black Irish.

Taking my hand, he bent over it with an oddly courtly grace. "Rene  
Claudet. Enchante, mademoiselle."  
\----  
What's the English saying? Lamb to the slaughter? Bearding the lion in  
his den? ~Il n'est pas.~ Unknowing, Joanna Lambert had walked into  
danger. Had LaCroix remained here, he would have taken her oblivious  
audacity poorly. She who in both looks and personality so resembled the  
woman who had drove his beloved son to death might not have seen the sun  
rise again.

In coming here, she could have easily exposed herself to her sister's  
danger. Had she dug too deeply into de Brabant's past while vampires  
thronged in Toronto, it would have been necessary to stop her. But now,  
there was little to find, and no one but me to betray.

Divia had seen to that. I only survived because I had never seen the  
inside of the Raven until de Brabant was already dead and LaCroix was ready  
to leave.

"M. Claudet," Joanna said softly. Switching back to brisk, no-nonsense  
English, she asked, "Are you the new owner?"

LaCroix had given me the key, and the responsibility. He had already  
eradicated any evidence of immortal lives here, but the club could not just  
be dumped on the market. Why? I don't know. Did LaCroix expect his  
erstwhile daughter to return? There was nothing to return to. No one.

"Yes," I answered her. Legally, I was the new owner. The fact that I  
intended to be gone from this city in a matter of days didn't matter to the  
bureaucrats.

"Did you know the previous owner well?" she continued.

"No." She waited for me to expand on that one-word answer, and finally  
turned away when she realized I wasn't going to continue. She crossed to  
the bar and I followed. Ever the cordial host, I said, "I would offer you  
something to drink, but..." I gestured to the cooling unit that had  
recently held a decapitated corpse.

She knew what had happened; her lips tightened and she turned away. Idly,  
she wandered the room, touching the curtain of chains, setting them to  
swaying.

"You aren't going to reopen the club, are you?"

Her perceptiveness surprised me somewhat, but I answered her honestly. "No."

"Why?" This time, it was her one-word question that caught me off-guard.

"I am merely an intermediary here. I have no desire to run a club."

She looked at me through the chains. "So you will sell it?"

"Yes." Lie. The Raven would be held until the next century--and the next,  
should it come to that.

"You bought it as an investment?"

"Yes."

She struck the chains with her fist, frustrated at my closed mouth policy.  
"I'm sorry, Miss Lambert. I don't know anything to help you. " Another  
lie. I had every answer to every question she had, but for both our sakes  
I dared not reveal them.

Her shoulders straightened at the formal address, and the brief glimpse of  
anger was firmly surpressed. "I'm sorry I took up your time, M. Claudet,  
and I thank you for your patience."

"~De rien.~ I only wish I could help you more."

Truth.  
\-----  
Dead end.

All ends are dead, though. Life ends in death, and that is all that can be  
said.

I smacked myself on the head with a newspaper and flopped onto the couch.  
I was getting disgustingly morbid. Why did this matter so much to me? Nat  
was dead. I could do nothing for her. It was not my responsibility to  
find out the how and why of her death.

But I was the only one who was searching for the truth. Except that every  
line I followed was swallowed up and disappeared. Pulling myself off the  
couch, I went back to the computer, to the open file I had put together for  
Nat's case. There was frustratingly little there. I had checked through  
the File Manager on Nat's computer, looking for personal writings, an  
electronic journal, as it were. There was nothing there.

Except for several thousand K worth of memory not accounted for.

Suddenly excited, I pulled up a chair and tried to access the files through  
DOS. A box popped up, requiring a password.

Two hours later, I gave up. I had typed in family names, birth dates,  
childhood pets, medical terms until I was dizzy. I finally accessed a an  
FTP site using my official code and retrieved a program that would run  
combinations of letters and numbers to break through the password. I set  
it up and went to get a cup of coffee. By the time I got back, the  
password had appeared on the screen.

Jo.

Nat had chosen my nickname for the password.

I sat in front of the screen, setting down my coffee cup when the hot  
liquid slopped over onto my shaking hand. I had thought that I barely  
registered in Nat's life, in her mind. Since Richard's death, she had made  
no effort to contact me. Yet I was on her mind every time she worked on  
her computer. It made my head spin.

I mastered my scattered emotions enough to start looking through the files,  
arranged chronologically and going back some six years. Within five  
minutes I put my head down on the desk and moaned.

For six years, Nat had been trying to cure Knight of being a vampire. My  
sister had gone insane.  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Return-Path: lizbet@primenet.com  
X-Sender: lizbet@pop.primenet.com  
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 19:28:35 -0700  
To: FKarchiver@fkfanfic.com  
From: lizbet@primenet.com (Elizabeth Ann Lewis)  
Subject: Resolution (2/2)

Chapter 3

Five people had died from exsanguination in a case in 1992. Three were  
homeless and had been murdered by a vengeful hospital worker. He died, and  
his blood had evaporated (evaporated?) in a fire.

The murderer of a museum guard, however, was never found.

A year ago, in a panic over an asteroid, the morgues were filed with  
bodies. Some of them had been drained of their blood. No one was ever  
charged with those deaths.

In February, two bodies were found in the lockers of a bus station.  
Drained. The case was still open.

Putting the files down on Knight's desk, I rubbed my eyes. I really didn't  
want to hear this. It was easier to take Nat's painstaking files of  
meticulous research as the ravings of a madwoman. My only question had  
been if Knight had shared her madness or if he had been the unknowing  
object of her medical fantasies.

I knew too much about how people died. I had kept calm and quiet in the  
presence of their bodies, even when the death had been particularly brutal.  
I knew the deaths described in the files on the desk before me were not  
natural. The wounds were inconsistent with the blood lost. And in almost  
every case there was an explanation from Nat that covered the abnormality.  
Individually, they worked. Taken together, however, they became less and  
less convincing.

As if Nat were covering up an undeniable truth.

If she really was crazy and believed that vicious bloodsuckers roamed the  
night, wouldn't she have exploited these deaths, used these cases to prove  
her point? Instead, she had disguised them. As if she were protecting  
something. Or someone.

Not for nothing had Sherlock Holmes been my idol growing up. The line  
about, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left is, no  
matter how improbable, must be the truth," had been quoted until it became  
trite, but it was still true. In my own work I reversed it, not excluding  
anything until it was justifiably impossible.

So I had to face the idea that vampires existed.

The proof for that theory was piling up. The cases on my desk. Knight's  
repeated "incredible" acts of valor. Nat's detailed, exacting medical  
notes...

Unable to bear any more, I stood up and gathered my coat to go out into the  
failing light. Thinking of the notes I read the night before made a  
strange ache tighten in my throat. At first, they were brisk and  
businesslike, referring to "the subject." Slowly, though, personality--of  
both the doctor and the patient--broke through. "The subject can't inject  
fluids other than blood--the body refuses it," gave way to, "I've never  
seen anyone make such a fuss about little things like drinking tea."  
Gradually, in the midst of the medical reports, I began to find the  
rudiments of the private journal I had hoped to find. Certainly it was  
unplanned and limited to her research--to Nick Knight. But it was  
unexpectedly revealing.

And then Richard was shot. For two days, no entries were put on the  
record. Then, Nat wrote, "Nick gave into my pleas and saved Richard by  
bringing him across. Now I have two patients under my care, two men to  
find a cure for. We had to stage a funeral for Richard quickly, so no one  
could ever find out that there was no body in the coffin. I called  
Jo--what to tell her? Sarah will keep this secret, but Jo has a stubborn  
honesty streak. I had to tell her Richard was dead and buried. She wasn't  
pleased. I'll leave it up to Richard to decide what she should know."

Three days passed before Nat wrote again. "Richard is dead. Every one of  
Nick's predictions came true. But I didn't listen, refused to listen. I  
was so sure that I was right. Sarah has been made to forget that day when  
Richard attacked her and me, but I won't. I can't. I wish I could."

At that point I blinked irritably. I had left the curtains on the window  
open last night to catch the moonlight, and the sun was rising, shining  
into my eyes. I had been up the whole night reading Nat's files.  
Exhausted, I had stumbled to bed, rising late to go to the station to look  
at the files of Nick's cases over the past seven years. And finding that,  
rather than refuting Nat's "research," it only supported it.

But--vampires? I was still a long way from buying that explanation.

The sun had set by the time I had bought Sydney and myself dinner and  
returned to Nat's apartment, changing out of my power suit for a  
comfortably ratty pair of shorts and an equally aged t-shirt. The cat ate  
his meal and then crossed to where I was standing at the window and rubbed  
adoringly against my ankles. I had no idea what to do with him. I didn't  
have time for a life of my own, let alone a pet. Suddenly, the thought  
reminded me of Lora Haynes' journal, and I swept Sydney up into my arms,  
cuddling my cheek against the sleek fur. Lora Haynes had killed herself,  
Nat was missing (dead, I knew she was dead, through a link I never wanted  
to acknowledge)--and myself? What of my life?

Could I blame Nat for going over the edge into insanity, lost in the  
romance of elegant predators of the night? We both knew death could be an  
ugly thing--what harm could there be in dressing it up in prettier clothes?

"You're losing it, Lambert," I told my reflection in the window.  
"Vampires. Yeah, right."

I let Sydney fall from my arms to hit the floor with his lithe grace and  
went to bed.  
\--------  
~Sang du Christ.~ The old curse came to my mind, oddly appropriate.  
Swearing by the blood of the Savior was not a childhood habit--I had sworn  
then in the coarse argot of a Parisian streetchild--but something I had  
aped from my master, in an effort to forget that grimy bastard thief  
without a name and with no future other than a squalid life and a miserable  
death.

He had saved me from that, my master. He came to the jail the night before  
I was to be hanged for theft and murder, and gave me a choice--death or  
eternal life. I cursed him, thinking he lied to torment me, until his eyes  
glowed gold and his teeth sunk into my neck, draining away the life that  
would have been broken the next day anyway. And then I understood that he  
meant what he had offered, that eternal life was within my grasp, and I  
fought for it, fought *him,* greedily draining him of blood in my search  
for strength. His was still greater than mine, and he broke free. We  
escaped from the jail before the sun arose, and hidden in the dark from its  
light, my master told me what I was, what I had become.

Except that I never was quite what he wanted. I have no quarrel with my  
life, with what he had made me. But I accepted control from no one, and he  
wanted to make me into his dark disciple, a immortal parrot, a mirror to  
reflect his own image. But I had no knowledge of how to bend, I held or  
broke. Enraged at his failure, he tried to destroy me.

Instead, I destroyed him.

For that crime, I could have justifiably been executed by my kind.  
Instead, I was approached by the very group I should have run from--the  
Enforcers. I was a rouge, unknown in the Community due to my master's  
obsessive desire to control and mold my existence. I was either their  
enemy or a part of them. They offered me a choice--death or joining their  
ranks.

How could they have known--how could *I* have known--that such an offer  
would mean so much to me? Nameless, homeless, now masterless, I had  
nothing to belong to and nothing to call my own. Upholding the laws of the  
Community, being a part in the most intimate way possible... it was beyond  
anything I had ever dreamed. For three hundred years I accepted my  
responsibilities with joy. Lives touched mine rarely, mostly only when I  
was required to end them, either as an execution for a vampire breaking our  
laws, or as protection when a mortal found out about us and could not be  
made to forget. If no one loved me, at least they could not ignore me.

Invariably, the wonder and glory of it began to fade. I realized I was  
little more than a petty thug. The false intimacy of power and death  
soured. When I began to refuse to preform assignments, my superiors asked  
me for one last task, one, they said scornfully, that would not tax my  
newly awakened conscience. I was sent to Toronto to watch over a woman who  
had discovered that LaCroix's mad son was a vampire, and to make sure that  
she relayed that information to no one else. I was to let no one else in  
Toronto know of my presence. Not Janette Du Charme, LaCroix's daughter,  
not any of the other vampires who drifted through Toronto and certainly not  
de Brabant.

When I was done, I would be free.

My blasphemous curse was still ringing in my ears. Natalie Lambert was  
dead, as was Nicholas de Brabant. I should have finally had my liberty.  
But now Joanna Lambert had done the unthinkable. She had taken whatever  
scant information was available after I had cleaned out her sister's  
apartment and impossibly had discerned the truth.

I knew what I must do. To gain my own freedom, I had to make her forget.

Or failing that, kill her.  
\--------  
"I'm in love with him. God, I'm a fool."

Restless, I left the computer and prowled about the apartment. I had tried  
to sleep, but had been lured back to the story that was unfolding before my  
eyes. Nat's medical files were increasingly laced with personal  
observations about Nick. Maybe it had been inevitable that she would fall  
in love with him, I don't know. But I knew my sister, she would have done  
her best to hide it, to deny it, to bury deep where it couldn't hurt her.  
And Nick, lost in his own world of darkness, would have wanted to keep her  
safe, keep her away...

*Damn!* I realized I was doing it again, assuming that Nat was not insane,  
assuming that vampires existed and that Knight had been one of them. A  
whole cast was assembling in my head, Nick, Janette, LaCroix... a fantastic  
story, a fairy tale, a creation of a highly imaginative and insane mind.

But Nat had never been fanciful, not even as a child. I could not imagine  
her making all this up, no matter how far over the edge she had gone.  
Which left...

"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever left is, no matter how  
improbable, must be the truth." I muttered my own panacea aloud.

"Indeed. So now what do we do?"

At first I thought I was imagining the question in response to my quote.  
But why would my subconscious speak with a slight French accent?

Rene was standing just inside the French doors I had been brooding by  
earlier that evening. I could feel the chill of realization slide down my  
body.

Vampires existed. Undeniable fact.

And he was one of them.

This time, I didn't claw for my gun. When had my reflexes shifted, from  
agent to sister? When had my priorities changed? "Did he kill her?  
Knight. Did Knight kill my sister?" I didn't remember shaping the words,  
but they came from me, compelling, drawing on something within me, clawing  
out, making me bleed. I didn't want to know. I needed to know.

"Mlle Lambert--" He began to walk toward me.

"DID HE KILL MY SISTER?"

Rene stopped. "It's not that easy."

"It is easy. Yes. No. Choose one, and give me an answer."

Suddenly he stood in front of me, his hand lightly circling my neck. He  
was taller than me, especially in my bare feet. Vampire. Killer. Drinker  
of blood. It might mean my life to challenge him, but I had to know. I  
had to know the truth.

I tried to step back, but his grip immobilized me. "Ah, so now you realize  
your danger. You didn't understand what you were walking into, Joanna  
Lambert. Now you do. ~Vraiment,~ do you want answers?"

"Yes." Without thought, still drawing on that thing deep inside of me. It  
was love. Love for my sister whom I had not known until she was dead. Nat  
was all I had left, and this was all I had left of Nat.

Abruptly, he let me go. "Get dressed," he snapped. Out of the depths of  
my own confusion, I heard the anger in his tone, and wondered.

"I want--"

"I know what you want. And I know that I should kill you now and end this.  
Get dressed. You'll get your answers."

I retreated to the bedroom to change out of my ragged shorts and t-shirt  
into jeans. I didn't know where he was going to take me, but I knew better  
than to challenge an angry vampire.

I'd get my answers. But would those answers end in my death?  
\------------------------------  
Chapter 4

I got my answers. Now, the question was living with them.

I left Toronto the next day. In the sunlight. I made sure of that. I  
cleared out everything I could from the files that would point to the  
conclusions I had drawn, and wiped Nat's computer clean. The captain was  
suprised that I dropped my personal crusade to discover where my sister had  
gone, but seemed to believe me when I said that if she had walked away from  
her life, it was by her choice, and that I would honor that choice.

Had it been her choice? In the end, had she known how much she was losing?  
Had she been afraid? I had stood in Nick's loft, listened while Rene had  
told me how and why -- and still not understood. A hand was clenched in my  
throat; I couldn't breathe. Tears burned in my eyes, blurring my vision.  
I almost thought I could see Nat with Nick, standing by the windows,  
pleading for love, for a chance to be together.

Why was I being haunted by a line of poetry? I barely remembered the rest  
of the poem; lit hadn't been my favorite class. And Yeats was much too  
moody for me.

But in my mind's ear, I kept hearing, "Things fall apart, the center cannot  
hold..."

And maybe that's how it should be. Maybe the center, the focus, the thing  
to which we cling so desperately should *not* always and forever remain the  
same. To let that happen would be to stagnate, to rot away, to wither and  
die.

"...the blood-dimmed tide is loosened..."

There had been no blood on the floor, where she had died. Where he had  
given up his life. Their lives would stand as no memorial. They had  
fought, suffered, struggled -- and, in the end, had not even the solace of  
an ephemeral reward. That was all. After a hundred years of searching for  
a cure, after six years with Nat, that was all. They died. Nothing more.

There would be no understanding it. There would be no resolution.

It hurt, to think that happy endings only happened in the movies. We can  
fool ourselves so completely, to believe that we have a right to happiness.  
We have no right to life, let alone joy.

What we have then, every breath we draw, every rapture that brightens our  
sight, is a gift.

"...mere anarchy is loosed on the world. The ceremony of innocence is  
drowned, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of  
passionate intensity."

Which is why I quit my job, loaded my practical little sedan with clothes  
and Sydney, and headed out on a cross-country trip. Maybe there aren't any  
answers out there. Maybe all I'll find at the end of my journey is a  
worn-out car, a whimpering bank account, and a sense that I've just tossed  
everything away for nothing.

No. Not nothing. For the chance of something new, different, bright, joyful.

For life.  
\--------  
I thought that when I took her to the loft, when I told her in excruciating  
detail about how her sister died, about how hope was dead and dreams a  
useless longing, that it would be over, and I, finally, after so many  
years, would be free.

I was both right and wrong.

It was over, all of it. There were no more secrets to keep, nothing to  
stay me in Toronto. I was free of the obligations that the Enforcers had  
charged me with for so many years. I could now do as I pleased, without  
care or let.

But I couldn't forget that there was one other person who knew exactly what  
had happened that night. And through her, I finally understood the two  
people I had been watching for so long. There was a kind of ruined  
nobility in their destruction, in their futile hopes for a future that no  
longer existed. To have the courage to try was rare. To have the courage  
to face the consequences was nearly unheard of.

This, I knew better than anyone.

Did she know, did she guess, that I watched her from a distance, as I had  
for so long watched her sister?

It was not over. Not so long as I remembered.

FINIS  
-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~-~*~


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